Rachel Hauck

I couldn't really figure out the genre of this book. It's about four girls in the summer of 77. They're all best friends and they've played a prank at a university and instead of serving their punishment picking up litter on the side of the road, the judge agrees to let them be camp counsellors for the summer. They're all hiding secrets from each other. It goes back and forth between that storyline and the girls in 1997. There was a true life murder of three girls in a camp during that time and that is a part of this story. I wasn't sure if it was going to be a suspense or a mystery or a coming of age.
It kind of jumped around a lot and at times felt a bit unresolved. There is one part where one of the girls sees a big tent and hears music and as she walks by someone sitting at the fire pit he can't see or hear her and the next morning everyone wondered where she had been. Was she dreaming? hallucinating? Was it real?
I did enjoy the book and was curious to see where it was going but there were also the points above that I didn't enjoy. It just didn't feel like a cohesive story but I found it entertaining.
This book was reviewed on the Literary Club Podcast episode 62
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1984185… (more)

A good part of the drama herein felt rather manufactured - of all the many and definitely staggering changes and difficulties involved in marrying into a foreign royal family, giving up US citizenship? Should neither have been a shock nor, perhaps, such a sticking point - not at the late date of immediately before the wedding, at least.

The persistent conflation - intentional or not - between being American and being Christian and being part of the Kingdom of Brighton (and that definitely threw me off as well, as a name for the original country) and part of the Kingdom of Heaven (in this, mortal world?) was unsteadying and offputting to me.

Meanwhile some of the conflict that I had anticipated seeing after the early setup disappeared; not smoothed away but forgotten in the manufactured and strange drama, and never handled again.

Even the last-minute addition of an obstacle after the main conflict was resolved wasn't really handled, just dropped again immediately after being raised, without even actually saying what the outcome was. Despite it including things like official accusations of treason, which are hardly so easily dropped.… (more)